Ben Wagner

Thermal drones are helping to monitor some of Australia’s most elusive wildlife Thermal camera-equipped drones are revolutionising wildlife surveys in Victoria’s native forests, say University of Melbourne experts.

Thermal drones are a promising tool for monitoring nocturnal arboreal wildlife, including elusive endangered species. They matched ground survey detection while covering more areas, greatly expanding our survey abilities. Read more: #unimelb Pursuit article: pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/The...

Drone-derived densities for surveyed areas of 100–200 ha were significantly lower than those extrapolated from 10-ha ground survey results, indicating that ground survey transect placement, accessibility, vegetation density and habitat surveyed significantly drive resulting population estimates.

Drones achieved high detection rates for targeted wildlife and consistently recorded more species and individuals than ground-based surveys. Ground surveys often missed
specialist species like the endangered southern #greaterglider when populations had low densities.

YouTube video by Dr. Ben Wagner Forest wildlife detected via thermal drone survey in Victoria, Australia

We compared survey results from spotlighting on foot (4-10ha) with drones (up to 200 ha) that used thermal cameras to detect animals’ heat signatures and a zoom camera and floodlight to identify species. All target species were found and >1000 observations made: www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TjR...

YouTube video by Dr. Ben Wagner Thermal drone survey for southern greater gliders in Victoria, Australia

Wildlife #surveys are vital for endangered species like the #greaterglider, which are usually counted on foot via #spotlighting, which is accurate but restricted in area. Drone tech enables larger scale surveys but had not been tested for arboreal fauna in native forests: youtu.be/xwKcCEbrFEA?...

Drones with thermal cameras are revealing the secrets of elusive Australian forest wildlife The new technology will help scientists monitor and protect some of Australia’s most iconic and threatened forest species.

Happy to be able to share that our work investigating the efficacy of thermal #drones for nocturnal #wildlife surveys is finally published in @esajournals.bsky.social Ecological applications: doi.org/10.1002/eap..... Find a summary in @theconversation.com here: theconversation.com/drones-with-...

@mandaloca2.bsky.social showing us that #dingoes have social networks too. Great talk on social interactions and drivers of population density of vulnerable Victorian dingoes at #iccb2025

At #ICCB2025? If you’re interested in #drones, arboreal #mammals and their recovery patterns in state #forests, I’d be keen to walk you through my poster! See me Monday at 4:30 PM - 6:00 PM in Great Hall 3 & 4 - Poster Board 32.

Looking forward to catch up with friends and colleagues soon!

High deforestation risk were consistently forecasted in lowland regions across four deforestation scenarios. This highlights the importance of protecting high diversity lowlands from future deforestation.

Forecasting deforestation and carbon loss across New Guinea using machine learning and cellular automata The island of New Guinea harbors some of the world's most biologically diverse and highly endemic tropical ecosystems. Nevertheless, progressing land-…

Out now: Our paper on deforestation risks across #newguinea led by Christoph Parsch with @biogeokreft.bsky.social and Bill Laurence. Another output of our fruitful collab between #unimelb and #unigoettingen

doi.org/10.1016/j.sc...

I submitted some photos to this year’s #VicBioCon25 photo competition. If you like them, consider giving them a vote :)

forms.gle/vzxiEycxEtwS...

Was great to talk about our research in windthrow yesterday at the Ecological Society of Australia conference and have some great chats with people about their own observations across Australia.

Dr Tom @itsnotfairman.bsky.social boldly convinces us that severe wind is an under-appreciated disturbance in SE Qld. He urges us to consider extreme wind events as opportunities to do conservation mngmt like thin woody thickening, restore habitats, and reintroduce cultural burns. #ESA2024

Hey #ESAus2024, if you're looking for more Aussie ecologists to follow here, there's some great people on the #WildOz starter pack below! 🦘🐨🌿🪲

Please suggest anyone else who's missing! 🙏

go.bsky.app/5hG9bGW

New #greaterglider research out, led by ARI’s talented Justin Cally. We looked into the effects of the large scale storm calamity in the wombat state forest in Victoria’s west on greater glider habitat:

doi.org/10.1016/j.fo...

Guess who’s finally on Bluesky! Welcome Tom

Photo of a Tasmanian Devil holding a phone in its mouth.

Hello Bluesky!🦋 We'll be posting all our updates for #VicBioCon25 here, as well as continuing to post on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter- here's a behind the scenes shot of one of our social media team members hard at work!

Thanks! Would like to be added please :)

Here for the koalaty content 🐨

The Ecological Society of Australia is here. Such a relief to have a platform for scientists to communicate with each other and the world more generally.
@ecolsocaus.bsky.social

More than 20% of Earth’s plants grow only on islands, global study finds More than a fifth of the Earth’s plant species are found only on islands, making them one of the largest biodiversity hotspots, a breakthrough global study has found. This conclusion has pushed the sc...

Our paper on global endemism in island plants is highlighted by @mongabay.bsky.social - many thanks for featuring this story!

news.mongabay.com/short-articl...

link to paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

#ecology #PlantScience #nature #plants #biology #science #research #conservation #island

Biodiversity impacts of the 2019–2020 Australian megafires - Nature Data collected from more than 2,000 taxa provide an unparalleled opportunity to quantify how extreme wildfires affect biodiversity, revealing that the largest effects on plants and animals were in are...

A bit late to the game, but I participated in this collaboration of over 100 Australian ecologists, led by the amazing @dadriscoll.bsky.social on Biodiversity impacts of the 2019–2020 Australian megafires that was recently published in @natureportfolio.bsky.social:

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Biodiversity impacts of the 2019–2020 Australian megafires - Nature Data collected from more than 2,000 taxa provide an unparalleled opportunity to quantify how extreme wildfires affect biodiversity, revealing that the largest effects on plants and animals were in are...

Biodiversity impacts of the 2019–2020 Australian megafires.

In this massive collaboration, >100 Australian ecologists put a novel spin on meta-analysis to discover how fire frequency, interval, unburnt area, pre-fire drought and protected areas modify fire impacts.🌏

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

‘Catastrophic declines’: massive data haul reveals why so many plants and animals suffer after fire Frequent fuel-reduction burning appears to prime ecosystems for major disruption when the next wildfire hits.

‘Catastrophic declines’: massive data haul reveals why so many plants and animals suffer after fire theconversation.com/catastrophic...

Based on @dadriscoll.bsky.social et al.'s paper out now in Nature www.nature.com/articles/s41...

‘Catastrophic declines’: massive data haul reveals why so many plants and animals suffer after fire Frequent fuel-reduction burning appears to prime ecosystems for major disruption when the next wildfire hits.

The condition of sites affected how severe impacts of the 2019-20 fires were. Most important was the number of preceding fires, with implications for prescribed burning🌏
The conversation theconversation.com/catastrophic...
The paper www.nature.com/articles/s41...
The video youtu.be/kCPjowmxH3Q